Galactic Cosmic Ray Origins and OB Associations: Evidence from SuperTIGER Observations of Elements ${}_{26}$Fe through ${}_{40}$Zr

Abstract

We report abundances of elements from ${}_{26}$Fe to ${}_{40}$Zr in the cosmic radiation measured by the SuperTIGER (Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder) instrument during 55 days of exposure on a long-duration balloon flight over Antarctica. These observations resolve elemental abundances in this charge range with single-element resolution and good statistics. These results support a model of cosmic-ray origin in which the source material consists of a mixture of 19${}_{-6}^{+11}$\% material from massive stars and $\sim$81\% normal interstellar medium (ISM) material with solar system abundances. The results also show a preferential acceleration of refractory elements (found in interstellar dust grains) by a factor of $\sim$4 over volatile elements (found in interstellar gas) ordered by atomic mass (A). Both the refractory and volatile elements show a mass-dependent enhancement with similar slopes.

9 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables, accepted by ApJ

References in corpus (3)

• Detection of the Characteristic Pion-Decay Signature in Supernova Remnants
• Nucleosynthesis and Remnants in Massive Stars of Solar Metallicity
• Identification of the TeV Gamma-ray Source ARGO J2031+4157 with the Cygnus Cocoon

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